Putin

Allon. Gabriel Allon.

As the doggiest days of summer are upon us, I find myself savoring every moment of the season’s blessedly slow pace.  I think I cling to summer a little more desperately than most people, even more than the kids on my block who are celebrating its freedoms. And I treasure having the time to read, especially fiction.

One sure sign of summer for me is the arrival of a new Gabriel Allon novel. Gabriel Allon is sort of an Israeli James Bond; a globetrotting superspy working for the Jewish State against its many enemies whose evil, more often than not, threatens the world order beyond the Middle East.

Gabriel Allon is the creation of author Daniel Silva, a journalist-turned-novelist who earned his stripes by serving for many years as a Middle Eastern correspondent for United Press International. He’s created a series of novels that have certainly struck a chord with the public: Each summer’s new Gabriel Allon adventure rises to the top of the bestseller lists. As Israeli politics more and more elicit a sigh (and an oy), it’s a fun fantasy to step into this world.

Gabriel Allon doesn’t want to carry the weight of the Jewish future—or the world’s—in his hands, but it is regularly thrust upon him: a theme which is very Jewish.

Since it’s a literary conceit that superspies have superpowers, Gabriel has one too: he’s a master art-restorer. In these novels, before he’s called into to service, he’s often found in Italian cathedrals, a Jewish artist restoring Grand Masters’ church altarpieces with his meticulous paintbrush. (There’s an interesting metaphor at work there, but it’s summer and I don’t want to think about it too deeply.) Gabriel’s world inevitably brings together recurring characters such as London gallery owners, Corsican mafiosi, secretive Vatican officials, and world-famous classical musicians.

But Gabriel Allon is quite different from James Bond doing his duty for her majesty’s secret service. Gabriel doesn’t wear tuxedos or play cards with super-villains in Monte Carlo, nor is he a suave womanizer. He’s full of reticence and ambivalence, though when a mission arrives, he will ruthlessly see it through to a just conclusion.

Gabriel is no lone wolf like 007 either. Over the arc of the series, Gabriel has gone from being a master spy/assassin, to the ambivalent Head of the Mossad, to the now-retired figure who keeps getting sucked back in to saving the world. He works with a recurring team of Israeli Mossad agents, each one a distinctive Israeli character: a feral Russian, a passionate Yemenite, a woman damaged in her youth from a terrorist’s bomb, an aging scholar who worked in a Vienna office hunting Nazi war criminals before being recruited, and so on.

My favorite recurring character in these novels is the elderly and retired spymaster Ari Shamron, a fictional figure who is presented as the founder and shaper of Israel’s spy network, ruthlessly hunting down Israel’s enemies “by way of deception” (Proverbs 24:6, and the title of a famous expose of the Mossad). In the novels, Shamron earned his legendary status by engineering the capture Adolf Eichmann, which makes him an imaginative amalgam of Isser Harel and others. He’s a father figure to Gabriel, but also often gives voice to the coldblooded ruthlessness of the task at hand—a counterpoint to the moral ambivalence that Gabriel, or the reader, may feel.

What makes Daniel Silva stand out in the genre of spy fiction is the authority with which he writes about the world’s crises. Sure, the books are summer potboilers, and as such, they don’t qualify as great literature. But they seem rooted in very timely evils. The new novel The Collector was written in 2022-23, and the ongoing Russian assault on Ukraine provides the intrigue. While the book is populated by art thieves, corrupt energy officials, bloodthirsty Russian oligarchs, and amoral white collar criminals of all sorts, there is one archvillain behind it all: “Volodya,” as his nervous acquaintances know him. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Putin never actually appears in the novel, but the author makes clear that he is the mastermind of the Russian kleptocracy that inherited the Soviet Union’s morals and values—and its nukes. As such, this villain is significantly scarier than, say, Goldfinger or Dr. No or Ernst Stavro Blofeld, because Putin is all-too-real.  

The book elaborates on Putin’s viciousness. As the Russians plot a false-flag operation in Ukraine, we read this exchange among his subordinates:

“How many will die?
General Belinsky had shrugged. They were only human beings, after all.
“But they’re Russian citizens.”
“So were the people in those apartment buildings back in ninety-nine. Three hundred were killed,
just to make certain that Volodya won that first election.” (The Collector, p.336)

 
The Gabriel Allon adventures provide several valuable gifts. For starters, they are “just” novels—their primary purpose is the pleasure of a good page-turner, perfectly timed for summer reading.

Second, Daniel Silva’s writing has the scent of insider-truth. He not only has done his investigative homework, but he also seems to know things from the contacts he made through his years as a correspondent in Washington and the Middle East. I trust him, for instance, when he implies that Putin’s insidiousness and cruelty go far deeper than most of us realize. (I write this in the days after Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary who led a rebellion against Putin’s military two months ago, was killed in a mysterious plane crash.) All of Silva’s books seem full of insider information—and all of them have an Author’s Note at the end that delineate which aspects of the book are fiction and which are rooted in reality.

Most importantly, there’s the question of whether or not the world needs an Israeli James Bond.

The key distinction between Gabriel Allon and James Bond is the most obvious: Allon is Jewish, working for the security of the Jewish state. As such, he doesn’t have the luxury of being an amoral, smirking playboy like Bond. Although the series almost never gets preachy about Zionism, there is always, beneath the surface, a sense of “we’re fighting for our lives, because we have to.” Gabriel Allon, a fictional creation, was recruited in the wake of the very real Munich Olympics Massacre, when Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israelis while the whole world was watching. As Gabriel sought out and assassinated the perpetrators, he paid a devastating price: a terrorist’s car bomb killed his son and maimed his first wife. That wife, Leah, recurs in the novels as a spectral presence living in a hospital in the Jerusalem hills, unable to make new memories, caught in an awful moment in time of Jewish victimhood and personal tragedy.

This darkness gives the books an edge, an awareness, that most potboilers lack. Gabriel Allon is a perpetually ambivalent figure. We sense that he’d prefer to be with his wife and kids, or with his paints and brushes. He doesn’t want to carry the weight of the Jewish future—or the world’s—in his hands, but it is regularly thrust upon him: a theme which is very Jewish.

Neither Allon nor Daniel Silva is prone to making long speeches about the justice of their cause. In fact, we sense that each of them is well aware of the moral imperfections of their case. Gabriel Allon’s Jewishness is not found in the Talmud or the synagogue. It’s found in a wearying view of Jewish history, especially in Europe, that led to tragedy and the absolute need for a Jewish homeland (and its defense forces). Here’s a brief exchange from The Collector, between Gabriel and his Danish intelligence counterpart:

“A promising beginning.”
“It’s early, Lars.”
“I’ve always believed in the power of positive thinking.”
“That’s because you’re Danish,” said Gabriel. “I find it comforting to prepare myself for a calamity and to be pleasantly surprised if it turns out to be a garden-variety disaster instead.”
(p.268)

There’s also no small amount of fantasy-projection going on in these novels, too. Any Jewish reader of these stories will say, “If only we had a secret weapon like Gabriel Allon!”

Throughout this hot summer of 2023, Israel’s existential threats seem to be internal as much as external. No superspies will rescue us from the current crisis, which calls upon the Jewish people as a whole to take a stand.  In the meantime, I’m glad to know that Gabriel Allon is out there where he belongs, ready to set aside his paintbrushes and step into service when he’s needed. Just in time for summer.

Where is Ukraine in the Haggadah?

The Russian assault on Ukraine casts an undeniable shadow on this year’s sedarim. Since the seder tells the story of the Jewish revolt against tyrants in the distant as well as the more recent past, I was curious: What are the opportunities, using the traditional seder symbols and texts, to bring in Ukraine to the Seder conversation? Where is Ukraine in the Haggadah?


I. THE REFUGEES

As I write, less than a week before Pesach arrives, the BBC reports that more than 10.5 million people have fled their homes, including more than half of the country’s children. 4.3 million have fled the country and another 6.5 million have been been displaced from their homes and fled elsewhere within Ukraine.  Where are these refugees recalled in the Seder?

1.     In the taste of the Matzah. Matzah is the food of people who have to flee their homes; of those who have to leave so quickly that there isn’t even time for the bread to rise: And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had taken out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, since they had been driven out of Egypt and could not delay; nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves (Exodus 12:39).

Many of the Ukrainian refugees were forced to leave their homes for safer environs like Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, and, for the lucky ones, the State of Israel. Many left with the clothes on their backs and barely time to grab their most precious possessions.

That is the essence of Matzah. It can be the bread of deliverance that arrives in the blink of an eye (as in Egypt), but it can also be the food of those who are forced out of their homes just as quickly (לַחְמָא עַנְיָא / “the bread of affliction” indeed).

2.     In the Yachatz. We take the middle matzah and break it in half. As we do so, consider the following meditation:

We break this middle matzah and are reminded of so many divisions in our unfolding story.

Some separations are blessings: “God separated the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:4); “God made the expanse to separate between the waters above and the waters below” (Gen. 1:7); “The waters split and Israel went into the Sea on dry ground” (Ex 14:21-22).

But other separations are tragic: Children torn from their parents in war-torn Ukraine, families displaced from their homes.

As the Matzah is broken into two pieces, we recall those refugees who have fled for their lives in just these recent weeks, and we remember that as long as tyrants commit atrocities, our world and each of us cannot be considered whole.

II. PUTIN, THE TYRANT

It’s not hard to see in Putin the same sorts of megalomaniacal tyrants that stain human history, all the way back to the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Jewish history is littered with these sorts of thugs, as the Haggadah says:

שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ, אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלוֹתֵנוּ
For it hasn’t been only one enemy who has risen up to annihilate us…

Us?

Yes, us. Certainly, many thousands of the Ukrainian refugees are Jews—at least before this war, Ukraine had the 10th largest Jewish community in the world. While Ukraine has a bloody and ugly history in its treatments of its Jews, there has been a Jewish presence there for over 1,000 years.

But that is only part of bigger picture.

Because the seder is also about freedom on a global scale. To celebrate Pesach is to declare: By virtue of our celebration, may others, too, be inspired towards liberation. Surely in our time, as much as ever, we must say: when some are enslaved, none of us are free.

And so, indeed, today another enemy is standing over us, threatening us all…

 

III. VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, JEWISH HERO

It is with pride tonight that we point towards President Zelenskyy, the Jewish leader of Ukraine who has made the case for freedom and justice for his country to the nations of the world.

Yet the Haggadah is famously reticent about naming human heroes. Moses’s name only appears once in the entire traditional Haggadah, emphasizing that deliverance comes only from God:

לֹא עַל־יְדֵי מַלְאָךְ, וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָׂרָף, וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָׁלִיחַ,
אֶלָּא הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בִּכְבוֹדוֹ וּבְעַצְמוֹ.
Not through an angel, and not through a seraph, and not through an intermediary:
The Holy One alone, in all God’s divine glory.

So maybe we shouldn’t dwell too much on Zelenskyy?

But the inspiration of seeing this Jewish man—who carries the moral weight of family members murdered in the Holocaust—is an important part of tonight’s telling, too. For many of us, God acts in the world through human helping hands and voices of truth, like the voice of Zelenskyy.

The famous A Different Night Haggadah (eds. Noam Zion and David Dishon, ©1997) suggests a tradition attributed to Rabbi Al Axelrad at Brandeis in the 1970s: Having the family seder award an annual Shiphrah and Puah Prize to someone in the world who stood up to modern-day Pharaohs this year.

Shiphrah and Puah, you’ll recall, were the Hebrew midwives of Exodus 1, who refused to follow Pharaoh’s genocidal decree to kill Jewish baby boys. Their civil disobedience is the first act of rebellion that leads to Israel’s redemption. Today, we should consider at our seder those individuals who have stood up in the face of tyranny and oppression to be voices of hope and freedom.

Surely, President Zelenskyy carries the legacy of Shiphrah and Puah this Pesach!

 

IV. OUR ROLE IN THE STORY OF HOPE

There is a lot of “reminding”, “recalling”, and “commemorating” in the Seder. But our seder is incomplete if it remains in the realm of memory and storytelling. The Seder is a call, upon completing our celebration, to work and act to make the world whole again.

This is incorporated in Elijah’s Cup, symbol of the messianic hope for a future free of war and fear.

Long ago, my family adopted a well-known custom: we no longer leave Elijah’s Cup passively on our table, waiting for God to redeem us. Now we pass Elijah’s cup around the table, inviting each participant to pour in a few drops from her own glass—representing that unique responsibility of each of us to be God’s partner in the work of freedom. And so, too, should we leave this seder committed to the task:

·      Giving Tzedakah to help the refugees; for instance, through the JDC, the World Union for Progressive Judaism, Beit Polska/Jewish Renewal in Poland’s Refugee Relief, HIAS, the Kavod Tzedakah Fund, or other trustworthy organizations.

·      Celebrate and share the stories of those who are doing good, such as the Dream Doctors Project, an Israeli organization that has sent Mitzvah-clowns to the Ukrainian border to welcome the refugees with gentleness instead of fear.  Or Tel Aviv University, who has offered full scholarships to Ukrainian students and academics displaced by the war. Or the Survivor Mitzvah Project, who have been caring for Jewish elders in the FSU for years—and remain on the ground with those Ukrainian elders who have been unable to leave.

·      Urge the Israeli government to reject the far-right voices of isolationism and to accept even more refugees than they already have; insist that this is the sort of crisis for which the Zionist message rings loud and clear. (This might best be achieved with an email to your local Israeli consulate.)

·      Get ready—they’re coming. The Biden Administration has called for America to open its borders to 100,000 refugees in the weeks and months ahead. Will we be ready to welcome them into our homes and communities in the spirit of safety and security?

This is what it means to bring Elijah. And that call to freedom is incumbent upon each of us this Passover. In the words of the Hasidic master Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787-1859, Poland):

We err if we believe that Elijah the Prophet comes in through the door.
Rather, he must enter through our hearts and our souls.

Is the War in Ukraine a "Jewish Issue"?

First: I know it’s a crass and parochial question. I don’t mean for it to be. Wherever there is oppression, tyranny, and military aggression by a malignant dictator—and Putin checks all the boxes—a Jew should be anguished.  If it’s a human rights issue, of course it’s a Jewish issue.

But there are a few specifically Jewish dimensions to the Russian assault against a nation that has the 10th largest Jewish community in the world (depending on how you’re counting), a population that has been there for over 1,000 years.

Ukraine and Belarus were homes to some of the most glorious spiritual geniuses in all of Jewish history; the birthplaces of some of the great figures of Jewish modernity, especially early Zionists and Hasidic masters.  Through the end of the 19th century, this region was home to the largest Jewish community in the world, by far.

 
Putin’s gaslighting. “Gaslighting” is a tool of abusers everywhere. It means: to obfuscate a situation by accusing the other person of doing something that the perpetrator himself is doing. (“Election security!” comes to mind.) Gaslighting makes the victim feel like he is the one who’s crazy, like she is the one who is the problem.

Putin’s particular gaslighting is his call for the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. It’s not even clear what that means, but in recent years many people have found it useful to hurl the “Nazi!” epithet at their social and political opponents, which is especially ironic, given the rise of actual neo-Nazis these days.

It's gaslighting not only because of Putin’s tyrannical instincts, but also because his invocation of Nazis implies the persecution and annihilation of Jews—as if Russian (and Ukrainian) history wasn’t soaked with Jewish blood.

One Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said:

They tell you that we’re Nazis. But how can a people that lost 8 million lives to defeat the Nazis support Nazism? How can I be a Nazi? Say it to my grandfather, who fought in World War II as a Soviet infantryman and died a colonel in an independent Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Jewish presidentZelensky was elected president of Ukraine in a landslide vote in 2019 after a career as a comic actor and stand-up comedian. (The Times of Israel: “He was catapulted to fame by playing a foul-mouthed schoolteacher on TV who became president after one of his students filmed his profane rant against corruption and posted it online.”) He caught the world’s attention by getting tangled up with Rudy Giuliani’s traitorous machinations and Trump’s first impeachment.

It does not seem that Zelensky’s Jewishness has particularly influenced his political outlook, nor was there a notable surge in antisemitism after his election. But you can be sure that if the Russian-Ukrainian situation devolves, murmurings about international Jewish cabals and conspiracies will be murmured in the dark corners of the Internet and the usual suspects.

 

Jewish canaries in the coalmine.  But perhaps the biggest fear is one that is linked to the region’s repulsive history. Jews are always the canaries in the coalmine at times of crisis.

Jews have long been identified by European mobs as “others” and outsiders, useful targets for hate. In Ukraine there was a 17th century proto-Holocaust known as the Chmielnicki Massacres; it is estimated that 100,000 Jews were slaughtered at a time when the world Jewish population was about 1.5 million. (Bodgan Chmielnicki, the cursed leader of the uprising, is remembered among Ukrainians and Russian nationalists today as a hero.)

Historically, the Jewish condition in the region was fraught. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (where untold numbers of generations of my ancestors lived until they thankfully escaped) were homes to some of the most glorious spiritual geniuses in all of Jewish history; they are the birthplaces of some of the great figures of Jewish modernity, especially early Zionists and Hasidic masters.  Through the end of the 19th century, this region was home to the largest Jewish community in the world, by far.

In 1881 Tsar Alexander II was assassinated—and the Jewish community was falsely implicated in the crime. Brutal pogroms were unleashed by bloodthirsty peasants with the knowing encouragement of churches, newspapers, and the government. And in a 30 year period, massive numbers of Jews got the hell out—approximately 2.5 million left, most of them heading to the shores of America’s goldene medina.

When the Soviet Union emerged in the 20th century, Jews were perpetual targets of discrimination, deportations to Siberia, and abuse. I know that I am not alone in my generation of Jewish Americans whose appetites for political action were profoundly shaped by the Free Soviet Jewry movement. (And we won—the Soviet Jewry movement has been called the most successful human rights campaign in history!)

There’s a reason why it’s so hard to visit a synagogue in Europe these days. When you go as a tourist and want to drop in on Shabbat services, there are hurdles to jump through; you can almost never simply show up and say you’d like to join the service. It involves calling ahead, always showing your passport, and often driving back and forth searching for a community that is self-consciously trying to keep its head down and not draw attention to itself. Such is the state of freedom of worship in “civilized” Europe.

So when we see this uncloaked Russian neo-Soviet aggression, our basic humanity is triggered and we worry about all the victims. But it also makes sense that we fear for the safety and well-being of Ukraine’s Jewish communities, who are on edge precisely because of the region’s awful history: When times are rough, Jews have always been the convenient scapegoat by oppressors.

Keep them all in your prayers this Shabbat, and for the awful weeks ahead that we surely have in store.

How can we help? Tzedakah Funds have been set up to help the victims of the crisis through the WORLD UNION FOR PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM and the JDC - AMERICAN JEWISH JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE.